Landlords: The First New York Tenements
The first New York tenements began construction in the 1850s. Landlords had realized that they could make a large profit by building inexpensive housing for the poor. For many years, there were no laws requiring developers to provide their tenants with gas, running water, plumbing, or decent lighting and ventilation. Developers wanted to maximize their rent and cut costs as much as they could. A total of 15,309 tenements existed in New York by 1865. More than sixty-five percent of New York’s population lived in those tenements. Tenements were a large source of suffering for new immigrants and their families. This is mainly due to their unsanitary and overcrowded conditions. The tenement conditions were horrendous and appalling. Large rooms …show more content…
New York has a tremendous population of small-wage earners that they should house decently, which are not being housed decently. Suburban life is unpractical; however, if they pay high enough rent, they should be entitled to their utopian lifestyle. They must pay to be decently housed with rightful security, sanitary, moral, and economic grounds. The tenement is not going anywhere; it is a solution to another problem of housing the multitudes of immigrants. Therefore, they must work hard and put in the effort and financials to make it decent and livable housing. However, the developers and owners of the tenements do not care about anything except for their money. All they do is slap a coat of paint on the grotesque exterior without even thinking about the horrendous living conditions on the inside. The landlords do not care and will not help New York tenement occupants get out of their filth. They must work together. The tenants have to care about their conditions and develop some pride in their home. They must get rid of their horrible and gross habits and clean up their home. The developers and landlords must also take pride in their properties. They should develop and maintain something they could be proud of. Eventually the living conditions will begin to improve and less lives will be lost due to the unsanitary and cramped conditions …show more content…
This way can be proven by an example of Miss Ellen Collins who owned three Water Street houses. Her first task was to allow light in which caused the piles of trash by the sick to vanish and some of the most stubborn tenants. The tenants who stayed abided by the new rules that were set. Collins’ tenants were some of the poorest out there and she did it as an experiment between tenant and landlord. She even lowered the rent as low as possible to still be making a reasonable profit to still be considered successful. She also added proper plumbing and hired a capable janitor to oversee the tenants while she was not there. After the rules were put in place, the houses started to run themselves and less supervision of the tenants was
Jacob Riis How The Other Half Lives Summary
1244 Words | 5 PagesJacob Riis in “How the Other Half Lives” is about the squalor that characterizes New York City’s working class immigrant neighborhoods. He describes deplorable conditions of these immigrants by providing specific examples, relaying them through quotation and images alike. Riis comments on the injustices that the residents of the tenements faced on a regular basis. So, with his attention to detail, Riis provided the contemporary reader with unsettling images of the poor and marginalized along with a few examples of the benefits of reform and reorganization in the poorer communities, to the benefit of residents. Another observer, Richard T. Ely, in “Pullman: A Social Study” writes about the community of Pullman, Illinois located in the suburbs of Chicago.
Brief Summary Of The Book 'Evicted' By Matthew Desmond
1289 Words | 6 PagesHousing is a huge part of the economy. Everybody a certain point in their life becomes a tenant or a homeowner. Recently, I read “Evicted “written by Matthew Desmond , a story of tenants and homeowners in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Matthew narrates a story different families with various background, race, and needs. All those family faced a commonly problem which is an eviction.
Review Of Jacob Riis How The Other Half Lives
525 Words | 3 PagesTheir “large rooms were partitioned into several smaller ones, without regard to light or ventilation, the rate of rent being lower in proportion to space or height from the street; and they soon became filled from cellar to garret with a class of tenantry living from hand to mouth, loose in morals, improvident in habits, degraded, and squalid as beggary itself. ”(Riis 63-64) With Jacob Riis’s descriptive choice of words you could essentially vision the tenants that were many lived in the city. Crammed in spaces where two families could comfortably live in, ten families would live there instead.
Summary Of Evicted: Poverty And Profit In The American City
1256 Words | 6 PagesMatthew Desmond’s book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, reveals the dire reality of renting leading to evictions and poverty by telling the stories of multiple people. There are multiple issues within this topic that Desmond focuses on such as discrimination. Desmond tells the stories of people from different backgrounds, of different genders, and of different races. The book is all about poverty, human nature, human relationships, and human hopes. Due to the nature of this book, it is crucial that the events are examined through a socio-cultural lens.
History Of The New York State Tenement House Act
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615 Words | 3 PagesHowever, what is happening now in Yonkers is the reverse effect. This decrease in value can be attributed to the current state of Getty Square and the homeless. Yet, this statistic will not last forever. In fact, the fervor the Mayor has for this project will ultimately force him to make a critical decision: continue to rebuild Yonkers while still maintaining a place for the homeless, or get rid of them in order to increase rent
How Did Americans Grow So Quickly Dbq
834 Words | 4 PagesFrom riots to invasions, many urban problems arose during the late 19th and 20th centuries. Technology was improving and it was making jobs easier and more productive but American’s were tired and weren’t working. Wage cuts were becoming more popular and economically, the U.S was falling apart slowly. Despite the problems, Americans discovered a way to replace the exhausted Americans who no longer took part in labor. Immigrants from Europe were pulled to New York in hope to find what the Americans had said they’d offer.
Summary Of Dark Ghetto By Clark
405 Words | 2 PagesClark (1989), made references to urban ghettos being overcrowded and the housing stock in decay. Like the rest of the New York City Housing Market, residential buildings in Harlem were built before the 1900’s. The conditions of housing stock in Harlem were poor, all except the newest buildings
Monopolies During The Gilded Age
879 Words | 4 Pages“The tenants died at the rate of one hundred and ninety-five to the thousand of population; which forced the general morality of the city up front 1 in 41.83 in 1815, to 1 in 27.33 in 1855” The landlords of these apartments overcharged the tenants who lived there and took advantage of the immigrants who lived in the apartments. Jacob Riis may have described the living conditions of the Gilded Age but he was also still a product of his time and was a racist. The way he described the problems was as if all this was happening because the Italians, Chinese, African Americans and other
Impacts Of State Led Gentrification
1516 Words | 7 PagesThese impacts caused by direct state-led gentrification can lead to negative effects on the locals and the relationships between each other. Due to the rise in expenses of living in neighborhoods experiencing gentrification, residents may find it demanding to pay for their basic needs such as housing which can ultimately lead to displacement from their property. Residents often find that the more affordable housing for them in the neighborhood becomes inadequate or overcrowded causing them to move to areas that have not been affected by state-led gentrification, therefore cheaper but further away from their original home. In an area undergoing gentrification, private renters especially, have a lack of control over the untenable level increase of rent causing the eviction of current residents to be able to renovate properties that will attract high-income residents who are in a position to pay the increased prices. This process of gentrification is labeled as second-wave gentrification which is developed by the state government's decisions, involves the construction of new houses on redeveloped sites, and creates a demographic mix of the upper and lower class (Bounds & Morris, 2006).
Gentrification All Bad Justin Davidson Analysis
1841 Words | 8 PagesThere has to be a realistic solution that can be put into motion to benefit everyone involved. Referring again to his article “Is Gentrification All Bad?” Davidson argues that urban renewal, if done right, is not a monstrous custom that it is painted to be; nevertheless, he reasons that gentrification depends on who does it, how they do it, and why they do it. As a resident in New York, a city where gentrification is as widespread as the common cold in winter, Davidson speculates that those who go into a neighborhood with the intention to renovate houses, or abandoned buildings ought to have a good reason for it. The author points out that “Gentrification does not have to be something that one group inflicts on another…” (Davidson 349), rather, he suggests that everyone, the gentrifiers and the locals, be on the same page when it comes to developing their
Tenement Museum
1034 Words | 5 PagesWhen considering exhibitions of the immigrant experience in the United States, the Eldridge Street Museum and Synagogue, as well as the Tenement Museum, hold a unique and exemplary collection and site concerning the history of Jewish Immigration. Though both are museums within blocks of each other in New York City’s Lower East Side, and serve as a site of preserved cultural heritage, they respectively offer a very unique exposé on early Jewish life and immigration, while synergizing narratives with other ethnic and religious groups. Through dialogues, tours, and cross-cultural events with the surrounding communities, these museums have consolidated their place as a “New York Museum”, as opposed to simply a “Jewish Museum. In addition to
Analysis Of Evicted By Matthew Desmond
927 Words | 4 PagesMatthew Desmond’s Evicted takes a sociological approach to understanding the low-income housing system by following eight families as they struggle for residential stability. The novel also features two landlords of the families, giving the audience both sides and allowing them to make their own conclusions. Desmond goes to great lengths to make the story accessible to all classes and races, but it seems to especially resonate with people who can relate to the book’s subjects or who are liberals in sound socioeconomic standing. With this novel, Desmond hopes to highlight the fundamental structural and cultural problems in the evictions of poor families, while putting faces to the housing crisis. Through the lens of the social reproduction theory, Desmond argues in Evicted that evictions are not an effect of poverty, but rather, a cause of it.
Argumentative Essay On Affordable Housing
945 Words | 4 PagesAccording to Preserving Affordable Housing is Green (2008), affordable housing during the renovation process creates healthier living environments. It resolves a big number of slums in many cities in the universe such as Dharabi in Mumbai, Kibera in Kenya and Kadwe in Zambia where lack of good condition and serious unsanitary. By this way, affordable housing receives positive idea such as “If construct affordable housing, then the remainder of the slum can be raised. This could change the whole lifestyle of Kibera” (Lunami, n.d.). Also, affordable housing always has sewerage system, fresh water and collecting garbage services, so people they do not have to live based on the dirty channel as well as let out waste water into the river or channels which moving around the urban center.
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